Allies
by Minttown1
Summary: In the end, Yuri was right about a lot, but most importantly, he was right when he said that the Umbrella Corporation would kill every one of them. (Movie-verse.)


TITLE: Allies  
AUTHOR: Amber  
RATING: R (mostly for language)  
FANDOM: _Resident Evil: Apocalypse  
_SUMMARY: In the end, Yuri was right about a lot, but most importantly, he was right when he said that the Umbrella Corporation would kill every one of them.  
DISCLAIMER: This is a fannish work. That means I'm taking someone else's hard work and tweaking it in completely unintended ways. I do so in a not-for-profit manner. Yay, legal.  
NOTES: Most importantly, public acknowledgment of my love and gratitude for Meredith, who encouraged my insanity and read through this story and urged me to post it. Yay, Meredith. You're awesome.  
Also, credit: the quotation in the second paragraph is lifted directly from (it is a sort of canon, and is thus quotable), and the dialogue in the final section of the story is from the film.

* * *

Carlos had no idea that buried behind some complex encryption and under his age and height and weight is one fact about him which he thought he had managed to keep fairly secret: 

"Harbors sentiments incongruous with Umbrella Corporation ideals."

Well, no shit.

They had had assignments before Raccoon City, but with those, the risk had always been minimal. They were specially trained soldiers, he and Yuri and Nicholai and the others, and they had always managed to neutralize the threat, unarmed men in suits or women and children in dusty, worn clothes, whatever the case had been, with minimal difficulty.

At night, back at the base, lying in a bed he could only have dreamt of as a child, Carlos could never help thinking how like his own home those villages had been. The professional men he could handle; he pictured the faces he saw each day in place of those before him, bloated faces sitting above suits that cost more than his mother ever made in a year of cleaning in the city, and pulling the trigger was easy. He tended to hesitate with the others, however; he realized early on that their only reason to die was that they lived somewhere within reach of Umbrella's claws.

He knew that this would be the reason when he someday died, too.

Some nights he dreamt of himself as a child, wearing old sneakers and jeans and what was once a red t-shirt, running down a dirt street to a makeshift church for confession. He details his sins, usually nothing worse than teasing his sister or talking back to his mother, and he apologizes to God with the prayers he has known as long as he could talk. Sometimes he is older in the dreams, a young man, and he nearly weeps as he tells of the senseless sins he has committed, and when he emerges from the confessional, the same man who taught him to read and helped him to obtain a green card to go to America lays a hand on his shoulder and says, "My son, God forgives you."

Then he would wake up, knowing better, and go outside to smoke a cigarette, staring at the security cameras. It was a blatant fuck-you to his superiors, who certainly knew. He was destined for an eternity in Hell; those mornings, he failed to see the difference in getting there now or in five years.

It was no coincidence, he realized after a time, that training slowed down and assignments ceased for a week or so after each of his episodes. Expendable or not, they were assets, and Umbrella had not spent years to find them and millions to train them just to have them break somehow.

Down time was still spent on base, but the atmosphere seemed completely different when he knew that he had at least a few days before he would next be asked to do something unforgiveable. He would go in after his cigarette, take a long shower and dress in his own clothes, make his way to the sparsely decorated common room at the end of what, however luxurious, served as their barracks.

One morning after a botched mission and a tense flight home and a dream and a cigarette, he sat with a book in his lap, not reading, but waiting for his team to join him.

His team. Their leader had died, having picked the wrong mission to actually start leading, and now the others were under Carlos' command. He already missed being part of a team, missed the way it diffused responsibility and dulled thought.

Yuri and Nicholai were the first to join him that morning, and when his silent nod made it clear that he had no intention of treating them as a lower rung on the hierarchy, they joined him at the far end of the room, where they could watch the door.

"Why did you agree to work here?" Yuri asked Carlos immediately upon sitting down. His accent was thick; he was exhausted.

Carlos would not have answered, had he not sensed the intensity behind the question. "I needed more money, and I couldn't join the American Army." He closed his book, ran a finger along its spine. "I got back to my rooms one night and was told that someone had called, offered me a job. I took it."

Yuri nodded. "Same with us," he said easily, indicating Nicholai at his side. "The system fails you, and when you find a new system, you don't stop to think about it: you take advantage."

"Or it does," Nicholai added, and it was the first time Carlos ever heard him sound angry outside of combat.

Yuri said one word, a comfort and a warning: "Nicholai."

"It isn't so bad there anymore, though," Nicholai continued. "Not like when we were kids." He paused, face contorted by disbelief and something approaching rage. As quickly as it came, however, it passed, and an easy smile came to his lips. "Shit, they even have McDonald's now."

Yuri chuckled, coughed, then grinned. The expression was natural and affectionate; he was apparently accustomed to Nicholai's behavior by now. They knew one another.

Carlos felt his chest tighten, and for the first time since he was fifteen years old, he found himself wanting a cigarette outside of the early morning hours. He was uncomfortable but could not look away when Yuri clapped a hand on Nicholai's shoulder and said, almost unconcernedly, "This fucking corporation's going to kill us all."

* * *

The first time Carlos saw them together was almost a month after he assumed command. Wandering the building at odd hours was now expected rather than suspect, and he still took great pleasure in doing so, in stretching his legs and clearing his mind. He grew accustomed to the gray walls and the fluorescent lighting in a way he never could when he had felt trapped within them. 

He turned a corner in the corridor, as aware as always, but he was unprepared for what he saw: Yuri backed against the wall, head buried in the crook of Nicholai's neck; and Nicholai's hand down the front of Yuri's pants, his head bent close, whispering.

Before Carlos could retreat, Yuri's head snapped up and his eyes opened. He stared at Carlos, and his eyes were too knowing. They said, You're not going to do anything about this. You're going to walk away.

He did, back the way he had come, past dingy walls and locked doors, straight outside to the compound, where he finally breathed. He kept walking, quickly, with his head up, as if he knew where he should be.

Minutes later, he ended up in the narrow space between two buildings. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands, wishing what he had seen had been only a dream. He hated that he cared, and when he noticed the tiny logo stamped on the bottom of his lighter, he threw it over the fence.

It disappeared into the darkness, and as he was walking back to his room, he heard the distinct crunch of plastic ground between road and tire. Imagining the shattered emblem satisfied him, and he slept well.

* * *

The woods were almost black, the moon new and the stars doing little to light the ground. Carlos slumped back against a tree trunk; his left leg no longer held his weight. Four gun shots sounded dully among the trees, then silence. 

He had enough experience and confidence not to worry what the silence indicated, but he still raised his gun when he heard someone moving through the undergrowth to his right.

"You can put that down," he heard Yuri say a moment before stepping into his line of sight. "They're all gone."

Carlos wanted to say something that would make it clear that he was a comfortable and competent leader, or at least something that would hide that he was uneasy in the other man's presence, but he remained silent as Yuri approached him and dropped down to inspect his leg.

"It doesn't look too bad," Yuri concluded, unwrapping a piece of gauze from his pocket.

"No?" Carlos breathed deeply, mentally checking his body's condition. "Well, it hurts like fuck."

Yuri smiled up at him, ripping a piece of gauze with his teeth. He carefully finished bandaging the wound, silent, his eyes locked studiously on Carlos' leg. "Thank you, by the way," Yuri said as he stood, wrapping an arm around Carlos and shifting him away from the tree. Carlos tried to ignore the words and the need for a response, instead focusing on the one hundred yards between where they stood and the clearing where their helicopter waited. "I'm really grateful," Yuri continued, face pink in the moonlight, eyes averted. "Nicholai would be really grateful, too, if he knew to be."

"Of course," Carlos said, staring down at the ground, at his leg, at his uneven steps in time with Yuri's. When they reached the helicopter, Carlos could not thank him, could not speak, could barely think. He pretended not to be the leader, not to know what the word 'debriefing' meant. He slept.

Twelve days later, he left the infirmary with a bundle of his personal effects. Under his freshly laundered uniform he found an envelope with his smaller items: a compass, two clips for his gun, and Yuri's lighter.

He held it only a moment before pocketing it. It may have been an accident, but he suspected that Yuri knew the same thing he did, that Carlos needed it more and would be less able to lie to get a new one. More often than not, in matters of faith and love and red tape, it was easier for Carlos just to play by the rules.

* * *

Yuri and Nicholai had a tendency to hide in plain sight, conversing in Russian over gray mess trays or a deck of cards. No one knew what they were saying; at least, no one ever admitted as much. Carlos knew only a half dozen words of Russian, all vulgarities he picked up from Nicholai. Nicholai, in turn, claimed to be able to pray in Spanish, although he had stopped saying as much once he and Carlos were no longer on equal footing within the team. 

He pretended not to, and would have believed it was only to punish himself anyway, but Carlos listened to their conversations, picked up patterns. Every conversation ended with the exchange of the same three-word phrase, and although he should have had no idea what it meant, he knew.

Carlos was alone with Nicholai one evening, inspecting firearms, and asked, "How do you say 'goodbye' in Russian?"

Nicholai looked confused but told him, a completely unfamiliar phrase.

"That's the only way?"

"It's how you would speak to a friend." Nicholai stared down at his clipboard. "Why do you need to know?"

"I don't." He already did. "I can finish this. Go."

"You sure?"

Carlos looked away. "Yes. Have a good evening."

Nicholai laid down the gun he was inspecting, a half smile battling the confusion on his face, and said, "Goodbye."

* * *

The compound was covered with a layer of snow on the night Yuri wandered outside, carrying a pack of cigarettes. He tapped one out and stood, twirling it between two fingers, until Carlos' petulant stare made him laugh. 

"What?" Carlos asked irritably.

Yuri held out the pack. "I brought them for you, anyway. I figure the the black market is less receptive now that you're in a position of authority."

"You're right." Carlos put a cigarette in his mouth and stashed the rest of the pack in his coat pocket. He cupped a shaking hand around the end of the cigarette and lit it, then held the lighter out to Yuri.

"Thank you." Yuri lit his cigarette, eyes narrowed, then pressed the lighter back into Carlos' hand. "Keep it. It's your vice, not mine." They stood in silence, Carlos' relief and Yuri's amusement both nearly palpable in the dark. "Speaking of which," Yuri said, his voice almost too light, "you shouldn't bother poor Nicholai."

Carlos flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigarette, watched them turn the snow at his feet gray. "Excuse me?"

"You scared him," Yuri explained. "He thinks that you're onto us."

"Aren't I?"

"Yes. All the same." Yuri breathed in deeply, smoke and cold air. "You're obvious. The way you hound Nicholai, the way you stare. If you were going to turn us in, you would have already. So there must be something else you want."

It was a game, Carlos realized immediately, and he thought himself unwilling to play games, but a voice in his head told him that he already had. "Maybe just an in on the black market," Carlos suggested, then. He tossed his cigarette butt onto the road.

"I don't think so." Yuri took a few steps to stand in front of Carlos, then cocked his head. "You're not all that enigmatic, Olivera."

"No?"

Yuri shook his head, said, "No," then leaned forward and pressed his lips to Carlos'.

A moment too long passed before Carlos stepped back to see Yuri take a drag from his cigarette and toss his head back, laughing. "I don't hound Nicholai," Carlos said, trying for a point.

"Not often," Yuri admitted, "but you did. I don't care, really, but you did."

"You don't care?" Carlos asked, voice level.

"Not like he does," Yuri answered pointedly, grinding his cigarette out under his boot.

"You can't leave that there."

"Can't I?"

It was a game, and in a pool of darkness behind an administrative building, lips and teeth and hands better than Carlos had imagined, Yuri won.

* * *

After a point, a survival instinct would always kick in. It was a fact of humanity that no one really wanted to talk about, what people would do when pushed past a certain limit, past the realization that something needed to give. So Carlos decided that given that he was faced with horror beyond belief on a regular basis, there existed worse courses of action than fucking a man, even one for whom Nicholai had regularly professed his love. 

Two days later, he decided that there even existed courses of action worse than doing so more than once. Within a week, he had stopped deluding himself except to think that at least he would always have one up on his bosses, as morality goes.

He was almost past fearing Hell; now he just wanted to believe he was more a good man than not, more like the Father than his father. He did not really believe it anymore.

"God doesn't care," Yuri told him one night, and his cigarette shone a sinister glow across both their faces. "Even if he's there, he didn't make this snow, and he didn't make this concrete, and he didn't make you or me, and he doesn't care what happens to any of us."

"If it's easier to believe that, Yuri." Carlos was not about to try to convince someone of a belief he often wished was not his own.

Yuri laughed. "Trust me, it is." He laughed again. "You're beautiful when you play the conflicted hero, you know that?"

And you're an asshole, Carlos wanted to say, but unsure whom he wished to address, he instead pushed Yuri against a wall, listened as his laughter dissolved into a moan, and pretended that this one night was somehow a victory.

Once that survival instinct kicked in, a man would hunt, kill, even scavenge, and he would answer to no one but himself; sometimes, even that responsibility became too much.

* * *

It became evident that Nicholai had found out, or else that Yuri had told him in a moment of guilt or spite, but he still always had Carlos' back in the field. Once they strapped on their guns and climbed into a helicopter, there were no lovers, only soldiers. 

The compound was a different matter entirely.

One night, Carlos sat in the common room, reading over mission reports, and Nicholai staggered in. "Get up," he ordered, hovering in front of Carlos' chair.

Carlos stood. He could smell Nicholai's breath now. Alcohol was considered contraband, but so were cigarettes, and alcohol was no more difficult to find. The liquor trade was tacitly tolerated, but if Nicholai caused a scene in front of the rest of Carlos' team, they could both count on repercussions.

Carlos took Nicholai by the arm and led him past Yuri and the others, shaking his head, and took him to a dark corner of the compound. He knew, but he still asked, "What is it, Nicholai?"

"You-" His voice shook, and he pressed a hand to his forehead. "You fucked it all up," he whispered.

"I did," Carlos admitted. He had already accepted that comfort and companionship were not worth what he had done; neither was sex.

"You knew." It was a statement rather than a revelation, but Nicholai still tensed anew, grinding his teeth and turning away.

Carlos welcomed the explosion of pain when Nicholai's fist connected with his jaw. It was very nearly a release; if nothing else, it was the conclusion of an inevitability.

"Why did you do it?" Nicholai was asking when Carlos registered sound again.

He spat blood through the fence and stared at the stain on the dirt outside. He had no need to watch Nicholai; he was turned away from Carlos, retching.

"Why?" he asked again, palms pressed against the concrete.

"I don't know," Carlos said, and it was the truth.

He helped Nicholai up from the ground and took him through the mess to the kitchen, where Carlos' rank gave him free reign. He offered Nicholai a cup of coffee and a bag of ice, and the younger man accepted both wordlessly.

"I have to report this." Carlos touched his jaw tentatively, then rinsed his mouth in the large steel sink. "I'm going to say you have battle fatigue. With any luck, you'll get a few days off base."

Nicholai nodded. Carlos pushed off from the sink and was almost to the door when Nicholai said, "If we were real soldiers instead of mercenaries, I might be executed for this. I probably still could be." He paused. "I wish you were a dick. I wish I could hate you like you deserve."

Carlos did, too. He walked away.

Three days later, Nicholai was gone, and Yuri was curled around Carlos in his bed, lips pressed lightly to the space where two days' beard hid dark purple. "I don't hate you."

"You don't need to."

Yuri shifted, kicked restlessly at the blankets bunched near their feet. "Nicholai's a maudlin drunk. Don't be too upset."

"I'm not."

"Good. Because sometimes he just gets upset and-"

"Don't patronize him," Carlos interrupted sharply.

"I didn't mean to."

"But you did." Carlos took a deep breath, willing himself to relax. If he ruined this, much of what he was ashamed of would become even more senseless. "Let's not talk about him at all."

"Okay." Yuri smiled and kissed Carlos' jaw again. "But everything will be okay when he comes home. We're a team. Nothing changes that."

* * *

Yuri was right. In the end, Yuri was right about a lot, but most importantly, he was right when he said that the Umbrella Corporation would kill every one of them. 

He died, slowly, in front of the two men, as they helped him through what remained of Raccoon City. "Here, take Yuri," Carlos said at one point in their doomed journey, and as Nicholai took hold of their friend, he never met Carlos' eyes, and Carlos suddenly knew everything that he had done wrong, from returning that phone call years ago to those tactless words and everything in between.

When Yuri finally died and whatever it was about him that impelled Carlos to further ruin three lives was gone, Carlos still could not pull the trigger. He made Nicholai finish off the body, watched as Nicholai put a bullet between his best friend's eyes to save Carlos, the fuck-up, the little boy with big dreams who was going to die anyway.

But Nicholai died next. Carlos was elsewhere at the time, but what happened was apparent. When he found out, he thought he was going to be sick, and he let the others think it was all because of the T-virus and nothing to do with guilt or grief.

The others. The new others are his team now. L.J. is willing to learn, and he has finally begun to sleep with his holster beside him rather than strapped to his body; for both facts, Carlos is grateful. Angela, Angie, is only a little girl despite her reported protests, and she reads too much and puts on too brave a front. Carlos knows that she must be wondering what happens to her when her medicine runs out, whether she will end up like her father or like one of the monsters, but she never mentions it. She cooks and cleans, and she reads, and they are much better off for having her with them.

And, of course, there's Jill. Jill fucks with her eyes closed, and Carlos has heard her mumble a stranger's name in her sleep. The stranger is dead, he assumes, which makes him less guilty now than he was a month ago. That it is partly his fault that Jill and her Peyton have been separated, too, occurred to him only once before he decided he has enough guilt over the things he actually could control.

Tomorrow, they are going to find Alice. He will make his team as complete as it can ever be.

He lies beside Jill in the darkness, both awake but unmoving, and he thinks about what tomorrow might bring if they are captured. L.J. and Angie died after a tragic reactor meltdown, and he and Jill are on the run from authorities, so if they disappear, no one will notice; they already have.

The possibilities, then, he imagines, are execution, imprisonment, torture, testing, or some combination thereof. He is past being scared.

He pulls on his pants and leaves Jill to sleep, or not.

When he was under Umbrella's employ, he wondered which of those same fates would be his.

Once outside, he fishes around in his pocket and lights a cigarette.

Execution, imprisonment, torture, or something worse.

He watches the cigarette burn against the backdrop of the city lights. He is still standing there, on his third cigarette now, when the sun rises.

He has seen worse days and worse odds, he thinks.

He goes to wake the others.


End file.
